


Slipping Through My Fingers

by JuniorWoofles



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-04-28 15:58:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14452719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniorWoofles/pseuds/JuniorWoofles
Summary: One second the world was in a bubble. Then the bubble burst and my heart burst with itCollection of ficlets set immediately after IW with various characters dealing with the fallout. Major spoilers





	1. Steve (Bucky) Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, have some angst. It's how I've decided to cope

For a moment the world was still. It was suspended in between chaos and terror and the bubble was threatening to burst at any second with the walls of uncertainty and fear pressing closer and closer and closer. Then he said your name.

He said your name and you turned and in the second that you saw him the bubble burst and you realised that the bubble was your heart and it had just exploded in your chest. He said your name and reached out to you and then he was slipping away from you again. There was nothing you could do as you watched him reach his arm out to you, like he had done all those decades ago when you watched him fall and felt your entire being plummet down with him. Like last time, he reached out to you to save him, to catch him before he fell but he stumbled towards you once and that was it. That was all he had time for. He had time to say your name one last time before he was gone again.

Your heart crumpled with him. He was your heart and he was gone again. Later, when the shock of it all hadn’t suspended your entire world you’d remember this moment for the details that hurt most. The look of fear in his eyes as he was torn away and the soft plead for you to save him. You’d see him fall, always falling, always out of your reach, over and over again, replayed over and over again in your vision as you take in the chaos all around. You never seem to be able to hold on to him. He’s always gone from you, always taken away from you. This time there’s so Hydra base to storm, no rescue mission, no risking everything to get him back, just the memory of a ravine in France and a ghost on a bridge asking “Who the hell is Bucky?” This time there’s going to be no miracle that returns to Bucky to you. There’s no raid to plan or plan to track him across the world or science to help straighten out what was broken. There’s dust where he once stood, there’s nothing but the ghost you want to keep in your mind’s eye but that’s fading too. The world is grey and fading and gone. For a moment the world was so perfectly still, a stasis of impending doom and then the pendulum fell and the countdown was gone and the world sped up for a second before it slowed down so unbearably slow. It slowed so you relieve both deaths at once. Simultaneously Bucky fell in front of you in a forest in Wakanda, the Winter Soldier reborn as the White Wolf, and in a train in France as Sergeant Barnes of the 107th. Simultaneously Bucky falls, falls, falls, fades and dies again and again in so many ways and it takes your breath away and stops your heart as it did the first time. You’ve lost him again. He’s gone once again, with your name falling from his lips like a prayer for one last miracle from you that you can’t give him. You can’t save him, not this time, not ever it seems.

The world fades away from you and your name sounds like heartbreak as it rushes like a river from the dead man.


	2. May (Peter) Child

You took him in when he had nowhere else to go. When he needed you, you were there for him. You were going to pick him up and cradle him in your arms and tell him that everything was going to be okay now. That was your job now. That was your role now. That was your purpose in this boy’s life now: to protect him from the world and help him grow into the best person he could be. He was yours and you were his and you were all the family the other needed and had.

He was a child. He was young and enthusiastic and happy and smiling and hid secrets from you that were not the normal kind. He lied to you and ran off and tried to save the world, tried to become a hero. You wanted to tell him that he never needed to go out and do this, that there were adults who could deal with these kinds of things but you knew he would never listen and you also knew that you wouldn’t be able to get the words out anyway. In a way you were proud of him but that part was suppressed by the instinct to hold him so tight and never let him out into the world again. That was the maternal part that had developed coming out in full force but you knew it wouldn’t be enough. You could be enough for him, family wise, but this was his decision and his life and all you could do was try and ground him for a while and keep a closer eye out. You could still patch up his bruises and listen to his rambles but now he didn’t keep as many secrets, shared his happiness with you and you understood the truth of every bruise he came home with. You tended to them with a tight lipped smile, kept your opinions to yourself and hugged him extra tight every single time. But there was no arguing, no controlling him, and you didn't want to try. You didn’t want to be the person who tried to put a limit on his happiness, on his passion. So you held your tongue, kissed his head and tried to hold anxiety at bay every time he came home late.

He was all you had. He was your world and you kept your world in a little apartment in Queens and you were happy. Your world, by its very nature, was created out of loss but you tried to make the best of what you had been given and tried to rebuild it in to the strongest relationship you could have. He was the strength in your life, the bubble of light that lit up every corner of your little world.

When you find out that the light’s extinguished and the bulb is broken and can’t be replaced your world is plunged into darkness. There is no light without him, no home, no family. There is no sun for your world to rely on. There is a shadow that steals across your heart and turns it into ice and you know that it will never warm again, not without the sun coming home and smiling at you like he hasn’t been running off and doing things that he shouldn’t be. He was the light when the dark came for you again and again and he smiled and cooed and you hugged each other so tight until the pain melted away and the world narrowed down to just the two of you in your apartment in Queens. He was always the one to take away the pain. Now that he had been taken away the pain settled and would never lift again. The world was thrown into darkness and you were left all alone in an apartment that felt far too large for just you and your broken heart.

 


	3. Nebula (Gamora/Guardians) Family

You spend most of your life trying to connect with the only family you had: trying to salvage a relationship out of the lot you’d been thrown in life. She never saw you like that. She wasn’t your sister then. She was just another daughter of Thanos trying to survive the childhood she seemed to be winning. She never saw how you struggled and fell apart every time she did something else to prove that she was the favourite daughter. She never saw you as her equal: also suffering, also hurting. She never saw the pain and the loneliness you went through every day.

It took years for her to see it and it took years for you to stop fighting, but you did. You reconcile the past and formed the bond you always wanted with her. She put down the swords and took you into her arms and you relaxed into the hug, as unfamiliar as the whole motion was. It was all you had been waiting for since the moment you found each other.

By the time she sees you as her sister she has another family, a better one, who love her and care for her and do all the things that a family would do. She never chooses them over you. When she realises she can have both she welcomes you into her family and after a little apprehension they welcome you back too. You get the brother and the friends you never thought you wanted. You get the family you never thought you needed but you find them all the same. You find kindred spirits who have seen hurt and pain and death and loneliness and who have come out of it better people. They have grown into stronger people because they have each other to rely on and they want to welcome you in and help you grow to. They want to make you safe, make you part of something, make you loved.

It’s too much, too fast and you can’t go with them. They don’t detract the offer because family is family no matter how far apart they may be. This is your family now and even knowing that they’re off somewhere makes your heart feel lighter as your vengeance weighs heavier.

At the end you lose your sister first. You don’t process how little time you got to call her that with love in the name, not at first. You watch his face as realisation cracks right across it and grief turns the laughter on your brother’s face into a deep and painful sorrow. That’s when you realise what you lost, what you both lost. You lost the most precious thing in your life because she was loved by someone more powerful than the both of you. You watch his face and you know that he shows everything that you feel, that deepest of heartbreaks.

You never get to hold him later. You never get to talk to him about her afterwards or whatever it is that people do when they lose a mutual loved one. You never get to tease Drax or hug Mantis and feel safe and loved and with family again.

You lose your sister first but you can’t even grieve her for a minute before the rest of your family fades away one by one until you’re left alone reeling at a feeling you never thought you’d feel again because you never thought you’d be with family again. You never thought you’d lose family again, not like this. You hang your head and let grief settle into your skeleton and cloud your mind as you accept that you’re all alone again, fighting for survival in a cruel universe.

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter sparked the original idea but I have some more planned out. I will take ideas/suggestions etc so if you have any just let me know.


End file.
